Jet Blue blames WX, pilot rest rules for system meltdown

Sounds about right. I mean, it's not like people didn't tell the FAA that putting the work rules in place without a lot of questions answered during the end of a holiday week was a bad idea. Pretty sure someone even said "Wow. If we get a bad winter storm that weekend, it's going to be REALLY bad." Sometimes I hate being right. To be fair, it hasn't JUST been jetBlue, though. It's pretty much every airline. Makes sense that an article revolving around BOS would single out B6, though.
 
kellwolf said:
Sounds about right. I mean, it's not like people didn't tell the FAA that putting the work rules in place without a lot of questions answered during the end of a holiday week was a bad idea. Pretty sure someone even said "Wow. If we get a bad winter storm that weekend, it's going to be REALLY bad." Sometimes I hate being right. To be fair, it hasn't JUST been jetBlue, though. It's pretty much every airline. Makes sense that an article revolving around BOS would single out B6, though.
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Yeah, I'm not really picking on the JetBlue crowd- more just noting that an airline is trying to blame the rule changes as if they still might get them turned back. I'm sure there are issues industry-wide because bean counters were too cheap to be prepared.

I'm sure anybody with half a brain could see through the statement JB made. The rest of the lemmings might fall for it.

It is still kinda funny, though. Years to prepare and still nothing but excuses.
 
Oh, no. There's actually a little truth to the statement. With the new rules, our schedules could handle a 3 or 4 hour delay. 6-8 hour? Not so much. All I had was an MCO-HPN leg with a DH back the next day. They had to change my DH to the later flight, and even then I got home 4 hours late. If I had showed for the original DH (which canceled due to the plane not making it in the night before), I would have been pushing the new duty limits. It's just THAT F'ed up right now.

Keep in mind I was doing ONE leg on ONE FDP. Imagine a guy in that situation flying 3 legs. He'd have been toast.

As for the "years to prepare," it was more like one, and the FAA didn't even start training people on their end until late last year. Then the government shut down. I know the guy in scheduling that's been dealing with this. They were calling the FAA to get clarification on how some stuff was going to work as late as November and still getting "Uh....we don't really know" from the FAA. If the implementation is a cluster, then it's not going to go well on any sides.
 
kellwolf said:
Oh, no. There's actually a little truth to the statement. With the new rules, our schedules could handle a 3 or 4 hour delay. 6-8 hour? Not so much. All I had was an MCO-HPN leg with a DH back the next day. They had to change my DH to the later flight, and even then I got home 4 hours late. If I had showed for the original DH (which canceled due to the plane not making it in the night before), I would have been pushing the new duty limits. It's just THAT F'ed up right now.

Keep in mind I was doing ONE leg on ONE FDP. Imagine a guy in that situation flying 3 legs. He'd have been toast.
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I thought DH don't count at the end of a trip.
 
amorris311 said:
I thought DH don't count at the end of a trip.
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Depends on who you ask, I guess. Either that or they're just that clustered up in SOC. I think legally, you're right. I looked in our stuff to see what the duty limit was if you didn't have a technical FDP. Under the old rules it was 16 hours. Under the new ones, I couldn't find one. Apparently, just having a DH on your schedule us unheard of in the books.

I think people are scared of being violated by the FAA and used as guinea pigs right now.
 
kellwolf said:
Depends on who you ask, I guess. Either that or they're just that clustered up in SOC. I think legally, you're right. I think people are scared of being violated by the FAA and used as guinea pigs right now.
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Oh I'm with them. Sniff test with an hour buffer for at least a month from me.
 
I don't think it was possible to truly prepare for the 117 rules though. There are so many intertwining ways to time out, etc. that the only real tests was to make them live, and see how things go. Simulations and what ifs only go so far, particularly when there are about 100 different ways the rules can intersect.

I'm all for improving the rest rules, but what they did is too complicated and too hard to effectively model. How can the average guy tell if he if legal or not? You need a system that is simple to determine legality (out on the line) without a detailed logbook required.

Hopefully this meltdown can drive a revision to the rules.
 
PhilosopherPilot said:
I don't think it was possible to truly prepare for the 117 rules though. There are so many intertwining ways to time out, etc. that the only real tests was to make them live, and see how things go. Simulations and what ifs only go so far, particularly when there are about 100 different ways the rules can intersect.

I'm all for improving the rest rules, but what they did is too complicated and too hard to effectively model. How can the average guy tell if he if legal or not? You need a system that is simple to determine legality (out on the line) without a detailed logbook required.
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Perhaps, a computer system, to TRACK the CREWMEMBERS...wait, isn't that called, like, CrewTrac? :D
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Perhaps, a computer system, to TRACK the CREWMEMBERS...wait, isn't that called, like, CrewTrac? :D
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lol yea, it would be nice…last I heard, my regional won't get the update with the predictive code (i.e. the code that can actually look ahead and project limit exceedences) until jan 26th-ish. Who knows if that is still true. right now they only know if we busted a limit after we already busted it…soooo helpful.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
Perhaps, a computer system, to TRACK the CREWMEMBERS...wait, isn't that called, like, CrewTrac? :D
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You're missing the point. Those programs are all reactive. Sure, the company can tell when you've become illegal with a computer.

What I'm saying is that it's nearly impossible to model a massive IROP and predict the complicated ways that the crews time out. So the company can't really prepare for this until it happens, and then learn from that experience how to fix it next time. Plus, the company likely tried to recover like they always have (because they don't know any other way) which was inadequate. It will take some time for companies to learn how to recover. Not just JetBlue, but all airlines.
 
Whatever...this is what they get. They let this crap get so far out of hand with extending people and making the 121 limits their goals that you end up with being punished twice as bad. It's their own fault. They had plenty of time to staff and to implement and they are continuing to run the operation on a leg by leg basis which you can not do anymore. It forces you to look ahead and plan better. Give them some time, they will figure it out.
 
Pilotdude3407 said:
Whatever...this is what they get. They let this crap get so far out of hand with extending people and making the 121 limits their goals that you end up with being punished twice as bad. It's their own fault. They had plenty of time to staff and to implement and they are continuing to run the operation on a leg by leg basis which you can not do anymore. It forces you to look ahead and plan better. Give them some time, they will figure it out.
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They will. For one thing, they have to give you hotels first then reassign instead of the other way around. Like I said, until this happened, all the little things couldn't be discovered. So it's a mixed blessing...
 
Hold on here folks. The facts of the matter are while other airlines are having issues, Jetblue is the ONLY one that shut down their entire operation to these airports to 'reset' it. Now there are rumors on the other boards that they had to 'reset' the operation themselves or the FAA was going to do it for them due to their lack of crew legality record keeping under FAR 117. Other airlines aren't having that issue over the last few days. So it really isn't the new rules, it looks like it is JetBlue's implementation of them. Remember, JetBlue did all the 'heavy lifting' for the Passenger Bill of Rights folks thanks to their meltdown in 2007.

Looks like things haven't changed much since then.
 
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From the information I'm seeing from at my own airline, it's the operational complexities because of weather causing our cancellations. Many parts of our current contract are more restrictive than 117 so it hasn't even registered as a casual factor.

That's from reading updates from the company, the union and also little tidbits I hear from my line-flying colleagues out there.

Seems like a lot of the problems are lack of ground personnel.
 
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